Digital Divide Memo

Our assignment was to post a memo to a school board with some specific suggestions for helping students bridge the digital divide:

School Board Members,

I would like to bring your attention to a subject that I feel should be of great concern to our school district, the digital divide. As a school that concerns itself with not only the well-being of our students, but also our community, you must clearly understand the concept of the digital divide in our society. The digital divide refers to the rift that exists between those who have the practical access to technology and those who do not have the ability to access it. This term refers to the fact that some people do not have the physical resources to access information as well as the skills necessary for effectively accessing information. Based on results from a 2002 study by the U.S. Department of Commerce, digital inequality exists along socioeconomic, racial, generational and geographic lines in our country. The effects of this digital inequality could be staggering to our community. The largest concern I observe in our district is a socioeconomic digital divide. It is a fact that most jobs today require at very least a basic understanding of information technologies if not the ability to skillfully access and utilize technology. Those students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds who lack the ability to access technology face further economic problems in the future while the wealthy continue to take advantage of these resources for their benefit. It is our responsibility as a school district to address and close this ever-widening gap.

I would like to propose seven different recommendations of resources that may help to address the digital divide in our district.

1. Conduct a survey of our administration, teachers, staff, students and parents of the students to gain information specific to our district using SurveyMonkey.com. (http://www.surveymonkey.com/) This website helps you to personally design your survey, collect the results in one place and then analyze the results with powerful reporting tools. Paper copies of the survey can be mailed to parents without access to a computer or the internet. Also, access district and national demographics using the census website. (http://www.census.gov/)

2. Address administration and faculty with a presentation about concerns of the digital divide. Use the video Did You Know 2.0 on youtube.com (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMcfrLYDm2U) to motivate and allow the district to begin to see truth behind how quickly the world is changing and how important technology it is becoming. Be sure to clearly define the digital divide with the help of the international website dedicated tackling the issues of the divide, digitaldivide.org. (http://www.digitaldivide.org/) With all of this in mind, begin to form a task force of people passionate about bridging the digital divide.

3. Start a blog about the digital divide in our district. Post information about the divide and keep people up to date on new topics with information from The Benton Foundation website. (http://www.benton.org/) Invite the task force and anyone else with interest to collaborate on the topic of goals for bridging the digital divide. Educate the group on goals, indicators and benchmarks and post ideas while allowing them to propose new ideas.

4. Use the Innovation Network (http://www.innonet.org/) to help with evaluation of the program. This site will help a school move from goal setting to identification of evaluation questions, indicators, and data collection strategies for evaluating program outcomes and implementation.

5. Identify resources within the community by making a webpage through Google Sites. (http://sites.google.com/) This resource allows a website to be easily constructed. Goals can be outlined on the webpage to explain the way the district has chosen to carry out the task. Needs can be posted as a way to identify what resources can be found within the community. Also, look into programs such as Verizon’s Tools for Schools campaign. (http://foundation.verizon.com/) This program gives funding to schools that need resources to teach students and shares the vision of the need for technology in schools.

6. To help with the planning phase, use the web resource Edutopia.org (http://www.edutopia.org/assessment) a website from The George Lucas Educational Foundation that provides great tools for district-wide change. Here they take an in-depth look at five topics: project learning, technology integration, teacher development, social and emotional learning, and assessment. Also, see how the low-income community of East Palo Alto, CA designed and successfully carried out a model for connecting low-income families to information technology. (http://www.pluggedin.org/about/)

7. While I am sure that funding such an endeavor may be at the forefront of your minds, grants can be readily accessed from a number of places. Grants and information about how to apply for these grants can be found at http://www.grants.gov/ or the http://foundationcenter.org/.

With all of these resources at our fingertips, I have no doubt that we will be able to effectively design and carry out a plan that will make a lasting impact on our district.

The digital divide is problem that needs a solution for the betterment of our society. I hope that you see the need for action on this issue. It is very important that we gather our information quickly, build a strong group of leaders to steer the task, set challenging but reachable goals, evaluate our actions as well as the students’ achievements, identify our resources, plan appropriately and write grants to secure funding. I suggest that we begin to formulate ideas of how to get the proper information from our community so that we achieve a proper vision. A strong and clear vision will be very important in the coming weeks and months and will ensure that we see this very worthy cause to its completion.

Best regards,

Joel Scanga